Articles of footwear usually include an upper, a midsole, and an outsole. The outsole can be a unitary piece of relatively high-friction material that provides traction for the footwear. Also, the midsole can be made of foam or other similar material disposed between the upper and the outsole for providing cushioned support for the wearer. Moreover, the upper can include panels or sections of thin material, such as leather, textiles, synthetics, etc. that are attached together. The upper can cover a superior portion of the foot and can secure the footwear to the wearer's foot. Also, the upper can include various decorative features, such as visually pleasing shapes, stitching, colored sections, perforations, embossing, and the like, which make the footwear more aesthetically pleasing.
Typically, the panels of material included in the upper are cut from a sheet of bulk material. For instance, the sections can be cut from a sheet of bulk material using a die to increase manufacturing efficiency. More specifically, the cutting die can be operably mounted to a reciprocating punching or stamping machine over an advancing sheet of bulk material. With every stroke of the machine, the die can penetrate and cut the panel (i.e., the blank) from the bulk material. The cut panels can be separated from the surrounding bulk material and joined to other panels to form the upper of the footwear.
The cutting die can be an individual die for cutting one panel for every stroke of the punching machine. In other cases, a plurality of separate, substantially identical cutting dies (i.e., gang dies) can be mounted in a single punching machine such that multiple identical panels are cut with every stroke of the punching machine. In either case, the panels are spaced apart and cut from the same sheet of bulk material.
Although these conventional cutting dies and manufacturing methods have been adequate for their intended purposes, they do suffer from certain disadvantages. For instance, using individual cutting dies as described above can be labor intensive. Furthermore, even when using gang dies, a substantial amount of waste material (i.e., the bulk material between the bulk panels) can be created.